The Doolins of Oklahoma (1949)

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The Doolins of Oklahoma (AKA: The Great Manhunt) is directed by Gordon Douglas and written by Kenneth Garnet. It stars Randolph Scott, George Macready, Louise Albritton, John Ireland, Noah Beery Junior, Charles Kemper and Viginia Huston. Music is by George Duning and Paul Sawtell and cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr.After the fall of the Dalton Gang, Bill Doolin (Scott) becomes head of his own gang of outlaws. But with the law in hot pursuit and his yearning to start a new life, Doolin knows he is greatly up against it.Since it irritates many, it needs pointing out that if you are searching for a history lesson - a film full of real life fact - then look elsewhere. This is at best an interpretation of Bill Doolin the outlaw, where the makers get some things right and others not so. So just settle in for a Western movie, out to entertain with that bastion of Western, Randy Scott, up front and central.Standard rules of 1940s/50s Westerns apply, meaning there is nothing new across the dusty plains here, outlaw wants to escape his past but circumstances refuse to let him do so. Cue moral and emotional conflict, chases, fisticuffs, shootings, robberies and macho posturing. The Doolin gang are here portrayed as lovable rogues, with main man Bill particularly exuding that fact, and it's here where the Production Code tempers the promise of something more biting in narrative thrust. The lady characters are unfortunately short changed in the writing, leaving the guys to carry the pic to safety conclusion.At production level there is much to admire. Lawton's black and white photography is crisp and detailed, the interiors atmospherically photographed, the exteriors gorgeously showcasing the Calif locations to full effect. Stunt work (with legendary Yakima Canutt on point detail) is high grade, exciting and authenticity rolled into one. While the crowning glory comes with the stampede at pic's finale, exhilarating is not overstating it. Cast can't be faulted, the ever watchable Scott surrounding by genre pros who don't know how to soil a Western, and with Douglas in the director's chair you got a man who knows his way around an honest Oater.No pulling up of trees here, and some familiarity does do it down for those in tight with the genre, but lots to like here. From the gunny opening salvo to the mighty stampede, and encompassing rueful closings, it's a treat regardless of historical lessons. 7/10

Good Scott western, with lots of action, interesting characters, and a solid script. Doolin (Scott) may be a bankrobber but he's also capable of noble deeds. In short, he's a good-bad guy of the sort the iron-jawed Scott could play to perfection. Here he leads a gang of outlaws whose members are known to us by name. Funny thing about the movies. Even bad guys can be humanized enough so that we care about them. That happens more or less with these gang members. And get a load of the familiar Alabama Hills that Scott and Buddy Boetticher explored in their great Ranown series of oaters. Director Douglas does some effective staging with the Neolithic slabs, worthy of Boetticher. There're some other good touches by Douglas. I especially like the little boy who stares Scott down in church. I don't think I've seen anything quite like it. Surprisingly, veteran screen baddie George Macready plays a federal marshal, which took some getting used to. And what a sweetheart Virginia Huston is. Who wouldn't give up a life of crime for her. It's that element, I think, that lends the ending such poignancy. All in all, it's a well done 90-minutes by Columbia, somewhere between an A-production and a B. I'm just sorry Scott never got the recognition as a western star that he deserved.

Bill Doolin was an outlaw operating in Oklahoma territory in the 1890s who was captured in 1896 by a devoted lawman named Bill Tilghman who had spent four years doggedly pursuing him. Doolin escaped from prison but was eventually shot down by a U.S. Marshal named Heck Thomas. In THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA (1949), Doolin is played as something of a "good" outlaw by Randolph Scott. He's tall, handsome, polite to civilians, and blessed with a remarkable degree of self-control. He even goes straight at one point and marries a pretty, loving farm girl (Virginia Huston) and starts up a working farm. But, unfortunately, he gets pulled back into the outlaw life. As directed by Gordon Douglas, the film offers several bursts of exciting, well-staged western action, including lots of chases on horseback and some amazing feats of horsemanship. Scott is doubled in the long shots, but he does his own furious riding in medium-shot. Most of the chase scenes appear to have been shot in the familiar rocky terrain around Lone Pine, California, at the foot of the Sierras, a dramatic landscape perfect for such scenes, even if it looks nothing like Oklahoma.Western buffs will enjoy the way the film incorporates other historical western figures, including a couple who had later movies of their own. At the beginning we see the Dalton gang carry out the famed disastrous raid on Coffeyville, Kansas, a fiasco that only Doolin survives because his horse went lame at the last minute (which matches the account of the raid supplied in the book, "Bill Tilghman, Marshal of the Last Frontier," by Floyd Miller). The Dalton gang, of course, has been the subject of many westerns. Later in the film, after Doolin has recruited various gang members, they all adopt the habit of hiding out between jobs in the wide open town of Ingalls, where one of the gang, Bitter Creek (John Ireland), has a girlfriend. She is called Rose of Cimarron and is played in a mature, elegant fashion by Louise Allbritton (SON OF Dracula). One of the characters we meet in Ingalls is a spunky little two-fisted, sharp-shootin' teenage cowgirl named Cattle Annie who wants to join the gang and is well-played by Dona Drake (who was 35 at the time!). A later western, ROSE OF CIMARRON (1952), starred Mala Powers in the title role and I remember her as quite a fiery display of dark-eyed female outlawry. In 1980, there was a film called CATTLE ANNIE AND LITTLE BRITCHES, which starred Amanda Plummer as Cattle Annie, Burt Lancaster as Bill Doolin, and Rod Steiger as Bill Tilghman.There's a U.S. Marshal in this film named Sam Hughes who pursues Doolin for nearly all of the film's 90 minutes. He appears to be based on Tilghman. Why the name change when Marshal Heck Thomas is left intact, I can't say. Hughes is played by George Macready and Thomas is played by Robert Barrat. Tilghman, one of the most daring of western lawmen, was played by name in only two films I know of, the aforementioned CATTLE ANNIE and the TV movie, YOU KNOW MY NAME (1999), which starred Sam Elliott. The book I mentioned, "Bill Tilghman, Marshal of the Last Frontier," by Floyd Miller (Doubleday, 1968), is highly recommended if you want to read a vivid account of a real western lawman's exciting career. As for this movie, I would urge you not to expect the most accurate portrayal of events, but to take it as a piece of solid, well-crafted western entertainment, with an above-average cast and an attention to details normally left out of studio westerns.

The western outlaw biography "The Doolins of Oklahoma" is another rough-riding, bullet-blasting, gun-slinging outdoors saga about the notorious gang of bank robbers that plagued the Southwest during the 1890s. Scenarist Kenneth Gamet, who wrote scripts for several Randolph Scott westerns, including "Santa Fe," "Coroner Creek," "Man in the Saddle," and "The Stranger Wore A Gun," keeps things simple and straightforward. This law & order western puts the protagonist behind the eight ball, and director Gordon Douglas had no alternative but to let the Randolph Scott hero die since he plays a real-life outlaw and the Hays Production Code was still in effect.Narration over action footage establishes the time and setting of "The Doolins of Oklahoma." The narrator begins: "There was a time when Oklahoma Territory had its great free ranges. The cowboy went about his daily work, contentment in his heart. His only boundary—the limitless horizon. These were peaceful days, then the cattle herds disappeared. The government cut the ranches into sections and they became farms ringed by barbed strands. The free range was no more. The cowboy, who would not be fenced in, stared in anger at the intruder, blaming him for their loss of livelihood. Instead of turning their hand to a plow, their hands went to the six-gun to take what they reasoned was rightfully theirs, then to be joined by others so the outlaw gangs. The James boys . . . the Younger brothers . . . then behind them the United States marshals pushing on relentlessly. It was our sworn duty to hunt down to destroy this lawless element. And then, finally, bolder than their forerunners—the Daltons. Coffeyville, Kansas, October 5, 1892. The Dalton gang becoming so daring as to strike in broad daylight. The Dalton brothers, with Sam Powers, Bill Broadwell and Wichita Smith." As the narration concludes momentarily, we meet Bill Doolin (Randolph Scott of "Westbound") in a saloon at the bar, enjoying a drink. He is the victim of a lame horse. The local town sheriff brags to one and all that the townspeople and he blew the living daylights out of the Dalton gang. Doolin, who hasn't revealed his name yet, observes that the Dalton gang was shot down in the back. U. S. Marshal Sam Hughes (George Macready of "Gilda") approaches Doolin. He observes: "Never saw a man so bad he had to be shot in the back." Hughes' attitude takes Doolin by surprise. Doolin refuses to identify himself and leaves the saloon. In the stable, he discovers Bill Dalton. Dalton believes that Wichita squealed on the gang. Meanwhile, Wichita complains to Hughes and the town sheriff about flowers on the Dalton's graves. Wichita is anxious about this, so much so that he heads for the livery stable to hightail it and spots Bob Dalton through a crack in the plank walls. The informer circles around, entering the stable through the roof and surprises Bob and kills him. Wichita's luck with Doolin runs out; Doolin guns him down in self-defense, but our hero knows better than to stick around and argue his innocence. He skedattles and heads off to parts unknown.Eventually, Doolin forms his own outlaw gang. Bitter Creek (John Ireland of "Red River"), Thomas 'Arkansas' Jones (Charles Kemper of "Yellow Sky") and Tulsa Jack Blake (Jock Mahoney of "Tarzan Goes to India") are members of Doolin's gang. A posse of lawmen pursues Doolin and company, and he decides to split his gang up and reunite with them in three months elsewhere after their trail has cooled off. Doolin gallops off to another town, Clayville, with Hughes in hot pursuit. He throws Hughes off his scent by hiding in a church and later buys a ranch from his bank robbery loot. He marries Elaine Burton (Virginia Huston of "The Racket"), but his outlaw cronies show up and ruin his marriage. Elaine's father convinces Doolin to leave Elaine for her ultimate good. Doolin and the gang resume their depredations with Hughes hot on their trail. Gradually, the law whittles the gang down, with a wounded Bitter Creek dying during a long ride across the badlands. Eventually, after all but two remain of the Doolin gang, Big Bill (Scott) and Little Bill (Noah Beery, Jr. of "Sergeant York") ride back to Bill's old homestead. He remembers fondly his days as a farmer with an alias and a wife that he had to give up. They ride to his old farm, but when Bill spots Elaine working it, he pushes Little Bill out the door, but Elaine catches them trying to sneak away. Bill wants to take Elaine to a 'no man's land' territory that neither Kansas nor Arkansas claims where they can resume their lives under a new alias. "From this moment on we're going to forget everything that happened in the past," Elaine agrees. Just as things are looking up for our outlaw protagonist, Marshal Hughes and Marshal Heck Thomas (Robert Barrat of "The Texans") come knocking at the farm; they pose as census takers to get information out of Elaine. Elaine heads off into town with money to buy supplies. Doolin heads off elsewhere, but before he returns, Hughes and his deputies turns up impersonating census takers and question Elaine about her husband. Elaine heads into town. Little Bill rides out to warn Doolin about Hughes. Doolin is riding with a herd of horses and needs to get into Clayville, so Little Bill stampedes the horses to give Doolin a way to sneak into town and get Elaine. During the stampede, Little Bill dies when his horse goes down. Meanwhile, Doolin finds Elaine in the church and orders her to head out with the words of Elaine's father ringing in his head that he must leave his daughter alone. Doolin accepts his destiny, sends Elaine away, and walks out to be shot by the posse."The Doolins of Oklahoma" is a predictable, run of the mill oater.